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Everyone posted:Star Trek: Beyond is mildly fascinating to me because of what they did with the Jaylah character. Star Trek: Beyond was released in the US on July, 22, 2016. Anton Yelchin (Chekov) died, in a stupid, horrible accident in which his vehicle rolled into and crushed him on June 19, 2016 at which point the movie had long since been filmed, edited and in the can. While I don't see as much of a direct line as you do (Jaylah was merely accepted to Starfleet Academy), it's entirely possible that was a bit of insurance; Pine and Quinto were the only cast members signed for a fourth movie (they signed contracts with options for another movie in exchange for a massive pay raise on Beyond). Everyone else was out of contract after the third movie, and a few of them--Yelchin, Saldana--definitely had their stars rising.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 04:40 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:43 |
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I had thought that they would do the whole Excelsior thing with Sulu and Chekov going off, and maybe Jaylah and another alien to diversify the cast up. Chekov was certainly set up to be suave at the end so spacefaring adventures would have been cute as Kirk was relegated to more ceremonial and rote missions.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 05:34 |
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:(I always like to point out that Doyle's Holmes stories are never about solving mysteries but gleeful racist scandal-mongering...) I'm not going to deny that there are some. But all of them?
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 09:15 |
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A stunning number of Sherlock Holmes short stories involve people with dark secrets from their time in the colonies.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 09:45 |
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josh04 posted:A stunning number of Sherlock Holmes short stories involve people with dark secrets from their time in the colonies. Sure, but you could also say that: quote:A stunning amount of British history involves people with dark secrets from their time in the colonies. and it wouldn't be wrong.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 11:51 |
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Mulva posted:It's a young adult novel, so some of the ages are kind of hilarious. Snape was 38 when he died at the end of the books. He was made House Leader of Slytherin when he was like 21. Most of his edgelord poo poo happened when he was 16 to around 18. Harry's parents were dead at 21. But to a 10 year old or whatever, they are all ancient. When Harry meets Snape, Snape is.....30? Dark magic ages you quite a bit.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 16:35 |
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Snape always did come off as basically one of those guys who starts being crotchety in his teens and never grows out of it, and is also a gross motherfucker who doesn't really take care of himself. Also, being basically a posh British school teacher he's literally just a stock character, especially with holding ridiculous grudges against children for his entire life.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 16:49 |
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To be fair, all the other teachers including Dumbledore treat Harry like he is royalty, and constantly bend the rules to benefit him and his house. Snape may be an rear end in a top hat at times, but half the time he comes off as the bad guy for treating Harry and his friends like normal students.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 17:34 |
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Oasx posted:To be fair, all the other teachers including Dumbledore treat Harry like he is royalty, and constantly bend the rules to benefit him and his house. That's significantly true, but Snape was also superlatively cruel to other students who weren't Harry Potter. He was so abusively mean to Neville, that a monster with the ability to manifest as his worst fear turns into Snape to torture him. And although Hermione is Harry's friend, she's also an incredibly diligent student who respects him and his subject...and it doesn't stop Snape from insulting her appearance to the point she runs from the room crying. He's straight garbage. Alan Rickman was iconic in the role, but honestly made him seem cooler and more charismatic than the character deserved.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 20:40 |
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https://twitter.com/dvdpeters/status/1366809853507866624?s=21
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:11 |
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https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1367186326026526720
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:13 |
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I hope he starts singing Now You're a Man from Orgazmo in the show.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:15 |
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it's been noted before but Harry Potter is ultimately a children's series with suitably exaggerated mythic elements that relate to the target audience's lives in ways more muted, nuanced and realistic portrayals wouldn't. so: Harry lives in a cupboard under the stairs (he shares a tiny room with his brother in a cramped council house)! Snape is an abusive monster (he's a strict teacher that doesn't comfort and coddle you like your nursery school teacher did)! Dumbledore hides the truth, keeps secrets and acts erratically for no reason (adults' lives are strange and they regularly have conversations you don't understand)! etc etc also with regard to house elves I think Rowling is specifically parodying "right-on" left-wing student politics of the 80s-90s, in which well-meaning but distant middle-class educated types become very invested in worthy causes regardless of the actual needs or lived experiences of the people they are fighting for. Rowling is I think a fairly standard New Labour liberal, not a Tory in the aristocratic tradition, so "serving classes know their place" probably doesn't apply which isn't to say she handles any of this particularly deftly or well, of course
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:18 |
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So every time they do a movie with a woman or PoC in the lead role, we should expect that kind of claptrap right?
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:20 |
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Grendels Dad posted:I hope he starts singing Now You're a Man from Orgazmo in the show. Burkion posted:So every time they do a movie with a woman or PoC in the lead role, we should expect that kind of claptrap right? By all means drag them if it turns out to be the queerwashing opening of Endgame, tho.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:22 |
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It's only the most important thing to a company that had little to no interest in doing it before. It's a big studio film and even if there are POC in the writer's room, they're going to sand down the edges quite a bit and the uncomfortable truths of systemic issues will be chalked up to problematic individuals.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:25 |
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The reason this feels so bad is because civil rights are being run as a PR campaign now and not a political project.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:30 |
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This is all good and true, imo.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:32 |
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FilthyImp posted:That's... kind of a hosed up take man I just find them opening the "man" part unfortunate/hilarious. Like, is it going to be about adolescent masculinity? Oh, it's about race, got it.
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 21:52 |
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Lt. Danger posted:it's been noted before but Harry Potter is ultimately a children's series with suitably exaggerated mythic elements that relate to the target audience's lives in ways more muted, nuanced and realistic portrayals wouldn't. so: Harry lives in a cupboard under the stairs (he shares a tiny room with his brother in a cramped council house)! Snape is an abusive monster (he's a strict teacher that doesn't comfort and coddle you like your nursery school teacher did)! Dumbledore hides the truth, keeps secrets and acts erratically for no reason (adults' lives are strange and they regularly have conversations you don't understand)! etc etc Yeah this is good perspective. I read the series as an adult so always figured you need to take a ton of the stuff with a massive grain of salt and assume a lot of the stuff is cartoonishly exaggerated and Harry is a partially unreliable narrator, particularly with the Snape and Slytherin stuff where Snape is openly abusive towards students and all the Slytherins are ugly poo poo heads to a person. Then in the later books when Harry pulls his head out of his rear end and starts to see things more nuanced he ends up realizing Draco was in a lovely position his entire childhood and respects Snape's sacrifice enough to name his son after him (and even then just before these turn-arounds Harry gets obsessed enough with both of them that his friends are like "you seriously need to chill")
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 22:19 |
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FilthyImp posted:That's... kind of a hosed up take man Do not give Disney and Hollywood in general the benefit of the doubt regarding racial matters. Unless the movie starts with Falcon gunned down by police in the first 5 minutes for walking threatingly or something.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 00:25 |
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I suppose this is the new "Endgame was inspired by Godfather" and "Winter Soldier is a spy thriller" FilthyImp posted:That's... kind of a hosed up take man We can give them the benefit of the doubt when they earn it, and considering the constant queerbaiting, the delay in putting out a movie starring a female heroine and how they put in a heroic CIA agent using drowns to blow up african revolutionaries in the most anticipated black superhero film ever, I really don't think they earned it. And that's not even getting started on the poo poo Disney pulled with Star Wars
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 01:27 |
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McCloud posted:how they put in a heroic CIA agent using drowns to blow up african revolutionaries in the most anticipated black superhero film ever Wasn't Killmonger's "plan" to ship out a poo poo-load of Wakandan super-weapons and effectively create like 20,000 spiritual clones of Charles Taylor? Any decent person should sympathize with Killmonger's frustration and desire to see freedom and justice for all black people, but he was still a perfect example of H. L. Mencken's "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong."
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:11 |
Anthony Mackie has said some legitimately stupid bordering on offensive stuff about race in media so this feels even more egregious than the usual diversity-centric promo fluff.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:16 |
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Everyone posted:Wasn't Killmonger's "plan" to ship out a poo poo-load of Wakandan super-weapons and effectively create like 20,000 spiritual clones of Charles Taylor? I mean, they probably could have maybe not have had the whitest dude ever play a CIA agent that uses drones to heroically kill black people who are represented as a threat to the stability of the western world in a coup against the legitimate ruler of a nation rich in resources. It's just not a good look. The CIA agent was also a state dept employee in the comics, so that little change was pretty suspicious too.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:24 |
Samovar posted:I'm not going to deny that there are some. But all of them? Watson is pretty much always just one breath away from telling you about skull calipers, and it gets worse from there depending on the story. Jungle pygmies? Yellow faces? There is just one template for the remaining stories and that's ACD going "heehee look what I'm implying about the royal family". In those, there doesnt tend to be actual crimes or mysteries, just Holmes going through the motions.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:29 |
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McCloud posted:I mean, they probably could have maybe not have had the whitest dude ever play a CIA agent that uses drones to heroically kill black people who are represented as a threat to the stability of the western world in a coup against the legitimate ruler of a nation rich in resources. It's just not a good look. The CIA agent was also a state dept employee in the comics, so that little change was pretty suspicious too. Were the vehicles he was shooting down actually occupied by humans? I though they were basically robot planes. For my part I figure they made him CIA to let him realistically give out the exposition on who and what Killmonger actually was - which a regular State department employee probably couldn't do.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:43 |
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Black Panther is the plot of the Congo Crisis and assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Where Lumumba is the villain.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:53 |
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Everyone posted:Were the vehicles he was shooting down actually occupied by humans? I though they were basically robot planes. This isn't a documentary, you can write whatever background for Killmonger they want. And they chose to make him a former CIA black ops guy who is doing what CIA black ops guys do, but, shock horror, to the wrong people. More than one person on here has pointed to that expositional scene as some sort of critique of the CIA, but it doesn't work as one. It's dropped purely as a piece of useful information, no one reacts to it in any way aside from 'oh, good, now we know his plan' Everyone posted:Wasn't Killmonger's "plan" to ship out a poo poo-load of Wakandan super-weapons and effectively create like 20,000 spiritual clones of Charles Taylor? And the complex, realistic solution the movie presents is 'build STEM centres' and 'talk to the UN' Again, it's not a documentary. They chose to write a black revolutionary looking to arm black people as an insincere, self interested friend killing psychopath who is completely beyond redemption. They chose to give that character a plan that, 'realistically wouldn't work' in a world where one drunken lunatic in a super suit privatised world peace in between movies.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 02:53 |
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I always took it as a bit of a riff on the usual way that the token black character is applied, where they'll have some incredibly impressive history to prove they're a valuable team member and instead this kind of bland white dude is just a CIA agent in the right place to help. There's probably other options that have less awkward reality though. They could've made them a non-American Intelligence Agency for example, but for what it's worth I never really read his job as important beyond is government agent thrust into a world he has no power in and so must actually listen and assist the locals in the manner they choose. Also doesn't he explicitly say Killmonger is using the techniques the CIA taught him?
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 04:34 |
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Lord_Magmar posted:I always took it as a bit of a riff on the usual way that the token black character is applied, where they'll have some incredibly impressive history to prove they're a valuable team member and instead this kind of bland white dude is just a CIA agent in the right place to help. Or they could have kept him as a State dept employee or they could have made him a SHIELD agent, which is considerably less stupid than CIA, a company with a pretty dubious history with Africa and African Americans. If his job wasn't that important, then it's even more egregious they chose the background they did.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 05:01 |
Everyone posted:Wasn't Killmonger's "plan" to ship out a poo poo-load of Wakandan super-weapons and effectively create like 20,000 spiritual clones of Charles Taylor? Killmonger's plan was not attempting to solve any problem beyond "Wakanda exists". Best case scenario his revolution causes some real damage and the Avengers stomp all over the country to pacify it so that a US led coalition can occupy it. Worst case the revolution flops, you now have Wakanda tech seeded throughout the world, meaning it's only a matter of time until their borders are forced open in order for every government to get their hands on vibranium. Either way he burns down the village that denied him warmth, shelter as a child, and his birthright. Snowman_McK posted:
To expand on this a bit: The implication throughout the movie is that mixed cultural heritage (Killmonger) and/or exposure to Black American identity (his father) are the corrupting influences, especially as it relates to militant liberational or revolutionary rhetoric. By the movie's logic the noblest form of Black politics is to wait for the minority elite (here a literal monarchy as a stand in for the Talented Tenth) to deign to intervene on their terms and timeline only after being confronted with a threat to their status or enclaves, with the blessing of the actual powers that be who stand to benefit from intracommunity pacification of other possible uprisings and who are positioned to profit from the actions of their newfound collaborators with little structural risk from any angle. It's an entertaining movie but the politics are baddd. The CIA thing is just the tip of the iceberg. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 05:07 |
I always read the resolution of Wakanda to be it publicly taking on the mantle of the colonizer, that it should aspire only to follow in the footsteps of its white betters. I did not appreciate that message.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 05:14 |
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Snowman_McK posted:This isn't a documentary, you can write whatever background for Killmonger they want. Well, the guy's name is "Killmonger." Figure his background won't be filled with hugs and puppies. And what reaction should there have been? Some version of T'challa and the other Wankandans going "Oh my stars and garters. You mean the CIA is full of meanie-means?" Nakia (who is basically Wakandan CIA) probably tanked more than a few Agency ops that threatened Wakandan interests. They know what the CIA is. Snowman_McK posted:And the complex, realistic solution the movie presents is 'build STEM centres' and 'talk to the UN' Well that "talk to the UN" pretty much reveals Wakanda as the newest public superpower and likely the most powerful nation on the planet. And it's a Black nation. And those STEM centers will be run by people with technology 50-100 years ahead of the rest of the planet. As beginnings go, it's not a bad one. And I think Killmonger was sincere as far as it went. The problem is that Killmonger, at his core, was pretty much still that 12 year old (or whatever) kid who saw a plane leaving and found his father murdered body. It's not that he was beyond redemption, but that he wouldn't seek it in the first place because he believed that what he was doing was right. Meanwhile, Tony Stark claimed a lot of things. Claiming to have "privatized world peace" was just one claim. And just because he claimed it doesn't make it any less bullshit. Everyone fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Mar 4, 2021 |
# ? Mar 4, 2021 05:19 |
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Everyone posted:Well that "talk to the UN" pretty much reveals Wakanda as the newest public superpower and likely the most powerful nation on the planet. And it's a Black nation. And those STEM centers will be run by people with technology 50-100 years ahead of the rest of the planet. As beginnings go, it's not a bad one. The problems black Americans face are not that they are insufficiently good at coding and calculus. And what even is the plan? Is Wakanda going to share their technology exclusively with poor kids in Oakland and Baltimore so that they can have some material advantages? Are they going to create an army of black genius Tony Starks? Is that a good outcome?
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 05:28 |
Killmonger's sincerity or ability to discern right from wrong doesn't change the subtext that is communicated through his characterization though. But if we're going down that road it is made explicitly clear that he holds minorities in no higher regard than anyone else? His body count is: Klaw Random white mook White museum lady His girlfriend (Black) Forest Whitaker Random Dorae miljae redshirt Plus the old Black priestess lady he yokes up after the ritual. And however many dozen (hundreds?) of people he killed in his backstory, presumably many of them in the global South. So again this goes back to the point of him being a parody of Black militancy as hypocritical, nihilistic, selfish, misguided, doomed to failure, etc on top of the fact that it was only through service to (white supremacist) empire that he was able to cultivate the skills and connections to even pull off his attempted coup. This framing elides the responsibility of the Wakandan elite in shaping his material conditions as a child (and thus his destiny) while positioning them as the arbiters of moral redemption and racial authenticity. The movie is shaking it's finger at all those "crabs in a barrel" wannabe revolutionaries (with bad childhoods who should really be blaming their parents for not working hard enough or staying on the straight and narrow regardless of all manner of racialized systemic oppressions) who just can't get with the program and end up messing up the good life for ones who did it right and made it out. Like someone else said, at the end of the movie the Wakandans were going to find themselves enmeshed in the white supremacist hegemony one way or the other, either as subjects (had killmonger's plan to give them a taste of ~400 years of antiblack violence succeeded) or as collaborators (and possibly eventual successors) within that structure. They chose the latter. The movie wants you to think it's paying homage to DuBois' "the souls of Black folks", especially the piece about double consciousness and how Black people across the diaspora perceive each other - with all the resultant tensions and conflicts and struggles to find common ground and define ourselves outside of the labels projected onto us. What it is actually invoking is that Chris Rock "Black people vs niggas" skit, updated with the trappings of Obama era delusions about how the world actually works. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 05:53 |
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Everyone posted:Well, the guy's name is "Killmonger." Figure his background won't be filled with hugs and puppies. And what reaction should there have been? Some version of T'challa and the other Wankandans going "Oh my stars and garters. You mean the CIA is full of meanie-means?" Nakia (who is basically Wakandan CIA) probably tanked more than a few Agency ops that threatened Wakandan interests. They know what the CIA is. They also chose his name. Also, literally any reaction at all would have been more than was there. Everyone posted:And I think Killmonger was sincere as far as it went. The problem is that Killmonger, at his core, was pretty much still that 12 year old (or whatever) kid who saw a plane leaving and found his father murdered body. It's not that he was beyond redemption, but that he wouldn't seek it in the first place because he believed that what he was doing was right. and you don't think taking black revolutionary ideas and twisting them into the lashing out of an emotionally crippled angry kid is sort of a statement on those ideas?
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 07:02 |
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Those are some excellent posts, Mat. Personally I, as a white person, felt that the ending was more than a bit...is condescending the word? It seems to be saying that the problem with the disadvantaged communities of color is that they are poor or lack a good education, and that providing them with with STEM centers will allow those dedicated enough to bootstrap themselves out of poverty But the main issue isn't that black people are poor and disadvantaged, it's that white people have constructed a system that keeps them that way. A stem center basically just amounts to giving a cancer patient a band aid.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 07:09 |
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I can definitely agree with what McCloud is saying, I feel that if they'd also mentioned Wakanda throwing it's political weight around and supporting more than just education in disadvantaged communities it might have landed better? Because the idea is that they're doing "aid work" to America and improving the quality of life and options for those suffering under the system, but there should also be comments on fixing the system itself. I can personally believe the system fixing is happening even if not mentioned, even if that's perhaps an idealistic outlook on a fictional world.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 07:16 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:43 |
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Lord_Magmar posted:I can definitely agree with what McCloud is saying, I feel that if they'd also mentioned Wakanda throwing it's political weight around and supporting more than just education in disadvantaged communities it might have landed better? Because the idea is that they're doing "aid work" to America and improving the quality of life and options for those suffering under the system, but there should also be comments on fixing the system itself. Yeah I think a big problem people have with the ending is that providing education to black people in the US is a great idea... but it's not the US doing the providing so what exactly does that mean for the black people? It's like the US is now allowed to unload that responsibility to Wakanda because now Wakanda will care for her people, and that's not a good look if you wanted to go for equality.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 07:30 |